Out-of-home¶

This guide will tell you all you need to know about targeting word-of-mouth clusters with your out-of-home (OOH) campaigns using Herdify.

You can use Herdify to target word-of-mouth clusters at two stages of the planning process. Firstly, you can select regions for running your campaign where there is a large amount of word-of-mouth activity. Secondly, you can select the specific locations of out-of-home placements to be around word-of-mouth clusters.

Selecting regions¶

On request, your Customer Success Manager can provide you with a file that ranks UK regions by the level of word-of-mouth activity in them.

The scores¶

Included in the list are all UK regions alongside their word-of-mouth index. The index reports the amount of word-of-mouth in that region, normalised for the average for the brand across the UK and the population of the region.

A region where the same amount of sales are driven by word-of-mouth activity as the national average will have an index of 100. A region where there is more than average word-of-mouth activity for the brand will have an index greater than 100. For example, a region with twice the average amount of word-of-mouth activity would have an index of 200.

The process¶

The process outlined here is the one most often followed by users but is far from the only way to incorporate the word-of-mouth indexes provided by Herdify into a regional selection process. Some common alterations are discussed in the Extensions section. If you would like further advice on incorporating the indexes into your specific process, your Customer Success Manager will be happy to help.

Remove any regions that you definitely don't want to include. This could be for many reasons such as distribution constraints, previous campaign performance or restrictions from the creative. These regions should be excluded from the following steps.
Select any regions you definitely want to include. You may have regions you know always perform well for you, or where you have built performance over multiple campaigns which you do not want to interrupt.
Rank the remaining regions by the word-of-mouth index. Select the number of additional regions you want to include in the campaign from the top of the list. For example, if you want to target 3 regions in total but have already decided that London must be included, you would select the top two regions from the list.

Selecting specific locations¶

Selecting locations for out-of-home activity that targets word-of-mouth clusters can be done via two main methods. The one you choose will depend on the data and systems available to you, and the agency or supplier you use.

Postcode or postcode sector targeting¶

Some suppliers and agencies have automatic systems that can select the best out-of-home locations to target desired postcodes or postcode sectors. If these are available to you, we recommend using them.

Proximity ranking¶

We can provide a bespoke set of targets for a list of potential media locations based on the volume of word-of-mouth clusters close to them. The steps for selecting sites via this method are:

Share a list of coordinates (latitude, longitude) for all the potential sites with your Customer Success Manager.
Your Customer Success Manager will then make a ranked list of these sites available in the portal. Each site will have a word-of-mouth index score, reflecting the volume of word-of-mouth clusters in the vicinity of the site.
Make your selection of sites prioritising those with the highest word-of-mouth index, while considering your particular budget or campaign targets.

Extensions¶

The processes covered so far are the basics of incorporating word-of-mouth targeting into your out-of-home campaigns with Herdify. Here are some common additional steps and variations that users have found beneficial.

Selecting areas that aren't regions. If you are looking to select areas for the campaign which aren't regions, please get in touch with your Customer Success Manager. They will be able to provide a ranking of areas that aligns with the scale of the geography you are looking to select.
Identifying areas for expansion. Testing methods of combining word-of-mouth indexes with existing selection processes to identify the combination which gives the best performance. Comparing the performance of campaign regions with different combinations of scores from existing data and word-of-mouth indexes can indicate groups to explore in future campaigns. For example, it could be shown that regions with a word-of-mouth index above 100 perform equally well regardless of the other data available, suggesting that these regions are good targets for expansion.
Selecting the number of regions targeted based on the amount of word-of-mouth. It is not possible to estimate what level of word-of-mouth index will give a particular campaign performance without extensive analysis of previous campaigns. If you're trying to decide whether or not to include a particular region, we recommend comparing the indexes. If the region has a word-of-mouth index which is less than half the value of the lowest word-of-mouth index of the other regions in the campaign, you may want to exclude it. For example, to determine whether to include the fourth highest indexed region with an index of 125, you would compare its index to that of the third highest. If the third highest has an index of 250 or less you would include the fourth region, otherwise you would not.
Using targeted messaging in the creative. You can see a demographic profile of word-of-mouth clusters in the portal. This information can be used to inform creative that resonates with the people being influenced by word-of-mouth.

Testing¶

Many users want to measure the benefit of adding word-of-mouth targeting to their out-of-home campaigns.

To do this we recommend setting up a test where some of the sites are not selected using word-of-mouth indexes. This allows you to compare the performance metrics you are targeting with the campaign — for example brand awareness, sales or new customers — between the areas selected to target word-of-mouth clusters and those selected using other methods.

When conducting this test we recommend you:

Split budget 50/50 between the two selection methods.
If there are other tests running at the same time, split these evenly between the test groups. For example, if you are testing 2 creatives with a 50/50 split across the whole campaign then the distribution for each targeting group should also be split 50/50 between the creatives.
Conduct additional analysis of the performance of sectors based on their word-of-mouth scores across both campaign groups. This will enable you to identify the biggest opportunities for optimising future campaigns. Herdify can provide this analysis for you.